June 6th, 2008
by
Ide Cyan
The first episode of the new horror anthology TV series Fear Itself, “The Sacrifice”, aired tonight.
If you missed it: don’t worry. Just go rent Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, the third movie in the Ginger Snaps trilogy (which is a prequel to the first two, so it’s not spoilery), which was released in 2004. “The Sacrifice”, which is based on a short story initially published in 2004, and therefore in no way predates Ginger Snaps Back, was shot in the exact same location as that movie, has a similar plot, but is not worth the bother of fast-forwarding through the numerous commercial breaks.
Unless, that is, you want to see how the television series restores gender roles in its choice of protagonists to predictably sexist defaults. Here’s a quick comparison of the set-up for the movie and the television episode:
In Ginger Snaps Back, the leads are two sisters who arrive at a remote outpost in the middle of winter in 1815. The fort is entirely peopled by men, some of whom hold misogynist superstitions, and the fort’s commander’s young son is a werewolf who is kept hidden by his father. The sisters Ginger and Brigitte are faced with both the werewolf threat and with the misogyny of the fort’s armed men.
In “The Sacrifice”, which is set in 2007 or 2008 (going by the mention of a specific videogame), four men, two of whom are brothers, are the ones who arrive at an isolated fort where people still live without electricity. The fort is kept by three young, blonde women, who lure passing motorists to appease a centuries-old male vampire, which has been staying in the fort as long as its inhabitants have provided victims for him. The three women and their dying father are the only survivors. These women seduce and pretend to care for the male characters, feeding them stew and tending to their wounds and making sexual advances explicitly for the purpose of capturing them to feed the vampire, which they are helpless to destroy themselves.
Ah, and what about race? Ginger Snaps Back has a Native American woman in a small role as a Magical Indian, and a Native man in a prominent role as a hunter who helps the sisters fight the werewolf curse. It’s not stellar, but it’s better than “The Sacrifice”, which only has one character with a hispanic-sounding name, who has nearly no dialogue and is the first to die.
All in all? Skip “The Sacrifice” and watch Ginger Snaps Back instead.
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